47 & 39

Keep those respective numbers in mind while evaluating the following two stories:

The debate over what to do about the expiring Bush-era tax cuts has focused mainly on income tax rates and the fight between Democrats and Republicans over maintaining the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

But in a letter to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, forty-seven rank-and-file Democrats urged Congressional leaders to maintain lower tax rates on dividends and capital gains that are also due to expire on December 31.

“Our fiscal policy should be one that maximizes economic growth and private sector job creation,” the lawmakers, led by Representative John Adler, Democrat of New Jersey, wrote.

“By keeping dividends and capital gains tax rates linked and low for everyone, we can help the private sector create jobs and allow seniors and middle class households to save and invest more,” the Democrats added in the letter.

These are, of course, the perfidious blasphemers that the Obamunist elite will be happily rid of next year anyway, so even if the latter were inclined to listen to and ponder alternatives on anything, they wouldn't be about to cave on such a heretical screed - even if the former were sincere.

Why do I say that?  Look at how many Donks voted to keep the House in session in order to pursue the very Bush tax cut extentions that forty-seven Dems purportedly argued for in that letter:

House Democrats on Wednesday barely won a 210-209 vote to adjourn the House without extending the Bush tax cuts.

Thirty-nine House Democrats voted against adjournment after Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH8) urged opposition to the motion in a floor speech that said it would be irresponsible for Congress to leave without providing certainty on the tax issue. Dozens of Democrats in tough races voted against adjourning.

"Vote no on this adjournment resolution. Give Congress a chance to vote on extending tax rates," Boehner said.

Boehner's floor speech turned the vote on adjournment into a referendum on the tax cuts, which has divided Democrats for months.

A little straight-forward arithmetic indicates that, at a minimum, eight of the Democrats who signed onto John Adler's letter turned around and voted with Nancy Pelosi to duck out the back door and let the Obama tax hike happen across the board.  Perhaps more.  Which just exposes said letter as more "Blue Dog" BS, designed for nothing more than desperate election season obfuscation.  They pretend to "revolt" but Granny Stoneface gives permission for only as many to vote "nay" as will still allow the vote to go the way she wants.

"Big John" Boehner "blasted" Crazy Nancy for what was always inevitable, but he's also got to be absolutely marveling at her political obtuseness.  The Dems are such partisan extremist zealots that everything they do just buries themselves deeper with the voting public.  It's become such a Godsend for the GOP that one can be forgiven for a little paranoid fretting that maybe it's all some kind of a setup and they'll whip some PR rabbit trump card out of their hat the week before Election Day.

And it's so unnecessary.  What would be the harm in giving Boehner and the "Gang of Forty-Seven" what they want, allow a full tax cut extention to pass, and then let the Senate kill it after the election?  Isn't that what the upper chamber is for?  The Bush tax cuts still die, you still get your depression-triggering FOUR TRILLION dollar tax hike, and instead of losing sixty to seventy House seats, maybe you only lose forty to fifty.  To borrow an Eeyorism, an electoral Three Mile Island instead of an electoral Chernobyl.

Not to go Godwinn on anybody's candy ass, but it's reminiscent of Adolph Hitler's obsessive military strategy after the tide of World War II turned against Germany: Stand fast and don't yield an inch.  All that accomplished was to get more of his forces destroyed or captured quicker and quicken the pace of the Allied advance and Hitler's final defeat.  In the same way the Democrat Politburo could engage in a PR defense of manuever, ducking and dodging to send false "bait" to voters to distract them from the inevitable "switches" to come later.  It'd be awfully late in the game for it, but it might save a FEW seats here and there.

Instead, it's in for a trillion, in for a megaton.

And they're ALL in on it.